Virtual Law Practice

Month: August 2012

  • Virginia Disciplinary Case on Misleading Lawyer Advertising

    A recent disciplinary case out of Virginia addresses the issue of a lawyer’s use of misleading online advertising and references “virtual” law offices. In fact, the objectionable actions taken by the lawyer are those that could apply to any lawyer or law firm that has a website or any online presence. It is not in fact related to the online delivery of legal services, but to lawyer advertising in general.

    The practitioner’s website and other forms of advertising stated that the firm included multiple attorneys, one  devoted to each practice area. These attorneys were actually independent contractors of the firm and each listed that they covered multiple practice areas. At the request of the Bar, the lawyer made changes to his agreements with the lawyers to make them full employees of the firm and amended the lawyer’s profiles on his website to correctly state all of the areas of law that they handled. Other advertisements stated that the firm had six offices in Virginia as well as in other states. Five of those offices were temporary, leased office space.

    The case does not go into detail about the firm’s practice management system, but states that the lawyer claims the client files are “secured electronically” which indicates they are using a cloud-based system to coordinate work among the lawyers in the firm. The lawyer also amended his website to explain the nature of the temporary, leased office space as “client meeting location” rather than permanent offices.

    Of all of the above grievances that were noted and responded to by the lawyer, the court in this case found that the lawyer was in violation of Virginia Rule of Professional Conduct 7.4 regarding communication of the fields of practice and certification, which requires compliance with 7.1 (related to misleading advertising). He was given public reprimand without terms for the violation.

    This disciplinary action raises interesting questions about law firms that outsource legal work to temporary lawyers for hire. Axiom is an example of a practice that leases lawyers to other firms to handle specific work. May these temporary, virtual practitioners be used by the firm for advertising purposes to hold out to the public that the firm provides legal assistance covering more practice areas than their permanent employees may cover? Or that the firm covers jurisdictions where those temporary lawyers are licensed but the primary law firm members are not?

    The Commission on Ethics 20/20 has asked for feedback regarding changes to Model Rule 5.5 and whether any are needed to address the concept of “virtual presence” under the UPL rule. How does the use of temporary virtual lawyers factor into this analysis?

    I am currently writing a book for the ABA/LPM on the topic of online marketing tools for lawyers and am researching the topic of how lawyers must comply with Model Rule 7.1 when using online forms of advertising. My opinion is that if you are going to be using temporary, outsourced lawyers and leased office space in multiple states, that it would be a violation of the Rules to misstate the nature of this law firm structure to the public in any advertising, online or traditional.

    But “misleading” is one thing and “giving them more info than they need to know” is another. Where do we draw the line in notifying the public about our business decisions and the business structures of our law firms?  How do we measure the potential harm to a public that is empowered to search online for alternative sources for legal assistance? [For the record, I am not disagreeing with the Virginia decision referenced above. I am merely posing a general question about the nuances of the term “misleading” in MR 7.1.]

    I think the core question is what is misleading to the public under Rule 7.1? It sounds like such a simple question, but lawyers love to complicate things so this won’t be the last time we will hear about these issues. (In fact, North Carolina recently published a draft ethics opinion discussing some of the these same issues related to false advertising of a lawyer’s law firm location and size.)

    Again, while virtual law firms obviously need to be hyper aware of online lawyer advertising restrictions, these new trends in law firm staffing, remote workers, and the use of cloud computing to connect practitioners across jurisdictions is applicable to all law firms, not just those that are delivering their legal services online to clients.

    [Thanks to Brock Rutter for sharing the Legal Profession Blog post about this with the elawyering task force listserv. Also, check out Bob Ambrogi’s post on this case on his LawSites blog.]

  • NC Proposed Ethics Opinion – Use of Leased Time-Shared Office Address

    There is a proposed North Carolina ethics opinion that may affect virtual practitioners who use leased time-shared offices or PO Boxes as addresses because they work from home or only need to meet with clients infrequently.

    Proposed 2012 Formal Ethics Opinion 6 “Use of  Leased Time-Shared Office Address or Post Office Address on Letterhead and Advertising” was considered by the NC State Bar Ethics Committee at their meeting on July 19, 2012. The proposed opinion will be published in the next issue of the State Bar’s Journal and public comments will be accepted. Depending on the feedback received, the Committee will either adopt the opinion or decide whether to drop or revise it before meeting again.

    For those of you familiar with the “bona fide office” rules of some states, the questions raised in the proposed opinion will ring a bell. (more…)

  • Webinar: How You Can Deliver Legal Services Online, ALI-CLE

    I’ll be teaching a CLE about how to deliver legal services online this Thursday, August 16th from 1-2:30pm EST for ALI-CLE and co-sponsored by the ABA Law Practice Management Section. A copy of my Virtual Law Practice book in ebook format comes with the program. We’ll cover the following topics: Introduction to virtual law practice; Options for setting up your virtual law office including: case studies, document assembly and automation, and multijurisdictional law firms; technology and understanding security issues of virtual law practice; and Ethical concerns and best practices in online legal services.

  • California Publishes New Ethics Opinion on Virtual Law Offices

    UPDATE: The State Bar of California has published its formal ethics opinion on virtual law offices, No. 2012-184. I wrote a post on the proposed draft of this opinion that came out this past spring.

    The summary reads:

    As it pertains to the use of technology, the Business and Professions Code and the Rules of Professional Conduct do not impose greater or different duties upon a VLO practitioner operating in the cloud than they do upon an attorney practicing in a traditional law office. While an attorney may maintain a VLO in the cloud where communications with the client, and storage of and access to all information about the client’s matter, are conducted solely via the internet using a third-party’s secure servers, Attorney may be required to take additional steps to confirm that she is fulfilling her ethical obligations due to distinct issues raised by the hypothetical VLO and its operation. Failure of Attorney to comply with all ethical obligations relevant to these issues will preclude the operation of a VLO in the cloud as described herein. (emphasis added) (more…)

  • Teaching Digital Lawyering with a Virtual Firm Simulation

    This summer I taught an online course for the University of Dayton School of Law entitled “Unbundling and the Future of Legal Services”. My 14 law students were required to read Richard Susskind’s End of Lawyers?: Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services and chapters from my books on unbundling and virtual law practice, along with podcasts and other digital materials throughout the course.  The course was held completely online three nights a week. The students could see me on live video feed and I also shared my desktop with them to go in and out of different technology applications.

    Aside from discussing the materials we were reading, the most practical teaching experience came from the use of our virtual law firm simulation. I created a virtual firm for the class by importing pretend contacts into the Total Attorneys’ platform and creating existing case files for several of those contacts.

    Each student in the course was a member of the virtual firm. We assumed general competency in all practice areas and set our jurisdiction as only “licensed” in Ohio. As part of their grade, each student at some point in the course had to put themselves in the shoes of a prospective online client with a legal need. They had to register through the client portal and request legal services online from the firm. This gave them the opportunity to experience the process from the client’s perspective, but also gave us new material as a firm to discuss during class time. I also set up a few ethics or malpractice issues in the cases for the students to handle particular issues we were discussing in the course materials, such as jurisdiction and conflicts checks, UPL, choosing when to unbundle online and when to refer the matter out, etc.

    I was impressed with the creativity of many of the students on the virtual firm simulation. (more…)

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